RE: Lance Smith to compal
True, consensus means the present majority agrees on something is right, or wrong. Yet, that never stopped contemporary and following peers disputing that fact, otherwise Physics would still the be same as it was at the turn of the century. To put all scientists on par with the irrational mob is disingenuous.
Since according to you nobody knows anything, the best advice to human kind would be to err on the side of caution. Now, that involves politics and many voters that are not prepared to relinquish their ecologically unsustainable lifestyles. Should anthropogenic climate change turn out to be a hoax, humanity is not off the hook because it is also saddled with another equally important and devastating flaw, the Easter Islander syndrome. To guarantee Homo "sapiens" survival on this planet, we have to live within its ecological capabilities and that demands environmentally sustainable lifestyles and a stop to go forth and multiply like rabbits.

Keeping in mind that a seawater/ice mixture has a temperature of -2C (fresh water is 0C) the resulting water vapour is a source of snow and/or ice rain perhaps an increasing source indicates the way to increased glaciation in N. America and Europe?

Three simple facts to keep in mind:

1) The ONLY requirement for initiating or increasing glaciation is 'more sow falls than can melt'.
2) More snow falls at temperatures between 0 &-3 than at -10 or lower.
3)Average temperatures worldwide immediately BEFORE and immediately AFTER the last "Ice Age" were as high or higher than now. If you include the enormous heat sink in all the oceans this was maintained whilst much of our now inhabited North was under 1500 metres of ice.

In the year 2000, near 10 billion metric tons of CO2 was released into the atmosphere; and every years since, that figure climbed, unfettered, to 31.6 billion metric tons emitted in the year 2011. And with a world economy model promoting nation against nation competition of exponential GDP growth (India + China), it is set to climb even higher and at a faster rate.

Bound in the globalized nation against nation GDP growth rate, it would appear that global warming - the most pressing issue for all humanity - has become an anathematic topic for both nation and world policy-makers as they continue with business as usual. All of which is highly alarming for me, as it is precisely that which I have just stated that is the cause of this accelerated, unrelenting, exploitative and destructive abuse of the planet.

We are speaking of exponential growth - in 2000, 10 billion metric tons of CO2; in 2011, 31.6 billion tons of CO2, what will it be in 2020?

These figures do not even include water vapour, methane or nitrous oxide. The more the earth warms, the more ice melts, the more water vapour & methane enter the atmosphere, making it warmer melting more ice, in turn, more vapour & methane enters the atmosphere, making the earth warmer, melting more ice...the process looping and relooping into an ever enlarging circle ( the ozone hole).

The meteorologic disasters that we are seeing today are from ONLY the greenhouse gases accumulated up to a decade ago. We will only see the consequences of the over 150 billion metric tons of CO2 released since then until today a decade from now.

We are on our way to triggering the apoptosis and entropy of our planet's ecosystem.

And unlike anything else, once we've reached that point of no return there is no saving ourselves.

For we can cut all the trees, but they will grow again;
animals extinct, with science and technology, we can bring them back again;
polluted oceans, with science and technology, we can clean it up again;
we can cover the planet with more landfills of garbage than there are cities, with will and technology, we can bury it in the earth's core.

But if we BURN this planet up, there is NOTHING that we can do of the ashes that remain.
We can not bring the cities and islands that have submerged.
We cannot make the ocean level go down again.
We cannot turn desserts into fertile lands again.
We cannot bring back the glaciers, the ice sheets and the ice caps - the planet's cooling system.
We cannot bring under control the meteorologic havoc.

Large geographical regions of the planet will suffer triple-digit temparatures year round. No crops or livestocks there for the 7 billion + and fast growing human population.

The earth has been warmer (and colder) several times previously in many past climate cycles than is projected for the next 200 years; the main difference this time is the threat posed by the destruction of Photosynthetic capacity to absorb the CO2.

This capacity for the (re)cycling is found in water bodies in the form of zoo plankton and on land in green leaves. Pollution of waters by petroleum and other artificial effluents has seriously affected/reduced the amount of available zoo plankton; likewise converting land supporting fauna to urban use plus bad agriculture has reduced the land based capacity.

Wasteful burning of finite reserves of fossil fuels has of course contributed to climate chaos but we need to understand that in order for these fossils to exist today, some 25 -250 million years ago there existed the photosynthetic base to originally sink this carbon. If that capacity was still around it would RE-sink the carbon that our reckless waste releases.

Ergo while asinine waste of fossil fuels and other finites impacts negatively on us in the form of reduced biodiversity and may well affect overall health, it is NOT the primary reason for CO2 levels in the atmosphere to double. Population, pollution, bad land use, that accompany "civilisation" are the major factors that must be REVERSED if we are not to extinguish the human and many other species from our small planet.

Hopefully we have not yet reached the RUN-A-WAY point. If this is so and as the waste will end when the resources are used up, perhaps we can put to good use the technology mentioned by the previous commenter before it is too late.

question. the artical mentions the ice melting faster as it breaks up.
How much influence does the use of ice breaking ships have on this affect? i imagine that they breakup thousands of kilometers a year and are being used more and more.

When icebreakers travel through sea ice, they leave trails of open water in their wake. Dark open water does not reflect nearly as much sunlight as ice does, so sometimes people wonder if icebreakers speed up or exacerbate sea ice decline.

In summer, the passages created by icebreakers do increase local summertime melting because the ships cut through the ice and expose new areas of water to warm air. However, the melt caused by an icebreaker is small and localized. Channels created by icebreakers are quite narrow and few in number compared to natural gaps in the ice. In winter, any openings caused by icebreakers will quickly freeze over again. So, scientists do not think that icebreakers play a significant role in accelerating the decline in Arctic sea ice."

It is possible to raise awareness to the global warming issue without raising a finger just by attributing human characteristics to animals such as the polar bear. Identification is compassion. I am a bit drunk.

Albedo flip is a big one, so is the frozen methane this meltdown will release every summer, more than cancelling forest sequestration in the northern temperate latitudes. So it goes, we continue to set carbon history on fire and ratchet toward the tipping point on Gaia's big roller coaster ride. Soon there will be many more screaming people on a big descent....stock tip: invest in bicycles, gumboots and ear plugs.

The above graph is sufficient to determine with some confidence that the Arctic climate is warmer today than in 1980. I agree that we will need Solar activity data to confirm its human origins, but to say we are NOT getting warmer after seeing this graph is denialism.

There is definitely a connection between climate change deniers and
intelligence. Do these guys really believe that most of the climate scientists around the world manage the impossible human feat of lying in unison and getting away with it? Whoever believes this nonsense hasn't got a clue about human nature. Science got only where it is today because all hypothesis are rigorously contested by peers.

If this doesn't convince sceptics, compare what we are doing to our oceans with our atmosphere. It can only absorb so much muck, before it becomes a cesspit and loses its original purpose.

At the turn of last century, it was believed that Physics was done....no other research was required. We just knew everything. Since then, QM has replaced CM (classical mechanics), astronomy has given us a whole new understanding of celestial mechanics, and cosmology has suggested several key theories for how the universe has come about.

Not too long before that, we just knew there were only 4 elements, we could turn lead into gold if only we found the right formula, etc...etc..)

My point? Consensus is never a measure of our understanding of contemporary phenomena. In itself, it is not an argument. The only acceptable argument is a scientific one. Everything else is just the herd....a herd that has a pretty good history of mass hysteria, and "lying in unison" reasoning. And that is even before such confounding factors as our modern reality: instantaneous global communication and professional activism.

(and before you copout and question my intelligence, you should understand that (a) I'm not a "denier" in any way - I am a scientist - and (b) I probably have more degrees then most and I am a well published scientist myself...intelligent? Who knows...but certainly a better student of human nature and certainly not a mindless cow).

So Lance, who would you trust to judge those scientific arguments that you mention?

As a scientist, would you not agree that that is best left to scientific bodies like the Academies of Sciences? Or do you think WSJ and the Heartland Institute are equally qualified?

IMHO, scientist or not, you are simply echoing denialist BS with your attack on consensus and your silly reference to physics that was considered done by some at some point in time. This is not just any consensus, this is the consensus among scientific experts. And to my knowledge no climate scientist ever claimed that climate science is 'done'.

Well said.
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Ignore sense. He means well but is still seeking sense. :-)
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Good to see ou sense, my old climate nemesis! I hope Australia is balmy an quiet. We're still boiling in the US just like veep gore predicted

* Certainly neither you nor I (assuming neither of us is a climatologist, neither of us have any right to an opinion - yes I said that...I know that's hard to accept in this day and age of pervasive narcism...but unless you are a trained climatologist, you do not have a right to decide one way or another).

* Another confounding issue is whether a so-called scientist is a scientist, a politician, an activist or one or more.

* Another can be financial conflict of interest. Remember Wakefield and his mythical autism/vaccine link?

As for scientific bodies, that depends. After all, being a member of several very large bodies, I see the politics every day. As for WSJ (don't forget The Economist!!), that's not really a good question. Just because it appears in the WSJ or the Economist doesn't mean its factual or not. Hopefully they are being truthful, but we all know the spin that the media loves to put on things in order to generate hype. So just because it appears in the WSJ or the Economist doesn't mean that it's automatically true or automatically false.

"IMHO, scientist or not, you are simply echoing denialist BS with your attack on consensus and your silly reference to physics that was considered done by some at some point in time. This is not just any consensus, this is the consensus among scientific experts."

Hahaha...ok, you're welcome to your opinion. But historically, there have been plenty of scientific consensuses (yes, among scientific experts) that have been proven false or have evolved. It happens all the time..it's even a part of the scientific method. Theories are continually tested, demonstrated to be right/wrong, and tossed/kept. That too is part of our job.

And neither did I...I was using the physics argument to illustrate the importance of always keeping an open mind. These were the beliefs of more then one physicist (and more then one politician)...thankfully, some physicists didn't buy it!

Anyway, concerning global warming and this consensus, note the subject of the article is melting ice on the arctic. These are two different things. One can accept the evidence that the world is warming without accepting the "findings" of the questionable evidence provided by the NSIDC since the NSIDC's results don't agree with the evidence provided by others. Case and point: if these guys are basing their entire argument on a starting point that doesn't match reality, then their evidence should be ejected.

Put another way: it is EASY to build a consensus if we automatically eject any evidence that doesn't agree with the outcome we desire to reach. That might be good partisan politics...but it isn't good science. Be very careful of mixing the two.

Well, since neither of us is a climate scientist, we would do well to look for credible sources of information in addition to using our own judgement.

I asked who you would trust, and you come with a story that basically says 'no-one'. Not even the scientific organisation of which you are a member.

You may see that as keeping an 'open mind', but that leaves you without any conclusion regarding the question whether mainstream climate change is right, climate change is man-made and we probably should do something about it urgently, or not and we can continue our fossil fuel use. If you adopt a similar attitude when standing on railway tracks thinking about whether that sound is really a train (the station master says it is, the village undertaker says it isn't), you'd at least be consistent.

Interestingly, you bring up financial conflict of interest as important when judging the credibility of a source of information. Yet you don't understand the difference between WSJ (owned by climate denier and free market fundi Murdoch) and TE, or between Academies of Sciences and the Heartland Institute as a source of information on climate change?

Appreciate your very apt reply. What Lance doesn't realise is that politics" bought by BIG OIL and other interests" in the US, is the best medium to sway the poorly educated, or naturally short changed lot.

Re LanceSmith: "(assuming neither of us is a climatologist, neither of us have any right to an opinion - yes I said that...I know that's hard to accept in this day and age of pervasive narcism".
Of course you can have an opinion, especially one that you sure of is right. Let me give you an example: MOST of us know that unchecked and persistent pollution, say large volumes of human excrement discharged into a pristine lake, transforms that body of water eventually into a cesspit. Now what do you think that our atmosphere is? And that good man has nothing to do with narcissism.

Yes, but that says little to the question of whether most physicists at the time felt that this was the case. Being sceptical of a majority opinion today, but accepting a single observation to determine the majority opinion at an earlier time is not being scientific.

Oh, don't think for a minute that I imagined that there could be any evidence that could be produced that would make you question your new-found religion. Oh, no. It was merely a direct proof to the questioning of the statement that, there were highly respected physicists in 1900 who thought that there was nothing more to discover in Physics, and those physicists were speaking for the overwhelming majority of them. It was a direct proof to a question, that's all. I would not want you question your religion. That would be sacrilegious, now, wouldn't it?... The scepticism of highly trained scientists regarding to the hysterics of the GW crowd could no more be explained to the true believers than colors could be explained to the color blind: or music to the deaf. Have a nice day and good luck to you.

The quote from Lord Kelvin is from a lecture he gave in 1900,
when he was 76 years old. You are convinced that he spoke for
the "overwhelming majority" of physicists; I am sceptical that he
was, at that age, fully aware of what much younger colleagues were thinking and doing. Have you any evidence - perhaps a survey -regarding that?

Precisely. Falsify away to your hearts content. Oh, I have dabbled in Physics, so unless proven wrong, the theory stands. But, as I said in an earlier post of mine, I have no intention of engaging in religious disputation regarding GW... I am signing off. Have a nice day and good luck to you.

Yeah, right, not a denier, a scientist first and foremost. But one that refers to an obvious denier article in the reputed 'TucsonCitizen.com', riddled with lies and irrelevant facts ("If that is true, then the world has 0.006% less ice this year than in 2007.").
Some scientist.

And yet you didn't specifically refute any of these so-called "lies and irrelevant facts."

Assuming the article is truthful, then none of the facts are irrelevant.

Hint #1: a scientist must perpetually ask the tough questions of dogma. That is what being a scientist is all about.

Hint #2: providing evidence contrary to dogma is not an example of denial....refusal to open your mind to evidence which does not agree with your dogma is denial.

This is what is so hard for nonscientists to understand: we scientists do not live in absolutes like the religious ideologue. We live in evidence, theory, reasoning, and probability. Pointing out and considering contrary information is part of our job.

"Pointing out and considering contrary information is part of our job."

I am a scientist too, but considering 'contrary information' that appears in the TucsonCitizen.com isn't high on my list of priorities. If you think you are challenging the conclusions of mainstream climate science with such material, I really wonder how you ever stumbled through a science course.

I could spend my day refuting nonsense on the internet to entertain gullible fools, but I think it is a waste of time when said fools prefer TucsonCitizen.com over NOAA, NASA and Nature as sources of information.

People like those are too stuck in dogma and select the sources that confirm their beliefs.

Point taken Lance, but when do you think we can actually draw any conclusion on anything, if even the consensus of all major academies of sciences is not enough for you? Your position leads to permanent paralysis only.

Back in the late seventeenth century, Western Europe was running out of forests - a major environmental catastrophe. The result was the Industrial Revolution as mankind found how to substitute coal and iron for wood. You can argue that, if the forests had been properly cared for then the world be a better place (no global warming) but the world's population would be a fraction of what it is, life expectancy would be much shorter, and so on.

There is no reason to think that global warming will not result in comparable technological innovations. There will be massive numbers of losers (Netherlands, Bangla Desh, etc.) just as there were in the Industrial Revolution but the net result may be positive. Who knows?

Lets see now, the Babylonians knew they were salinating their crop lands and failed to rectify the situation. The Easter Islanders knew they were chopping down all their trees and failed to rectify the situation. The same could probably be said for the sardine fisheries in Monetery California and along the West coast of S America, they have never recovered after collapsing.

Don't bet that tech can pull a rabbit out all the time. It's not like there's a dirth of carbon fuels to burn.

Sir, you miss the point: the earth has been warming and cooling for thousands (probably millions) of years. Long before SUVs and the "White Man's pollution."

Advocates constantly push spending $Billions to reverse the current trend of warming through collectivist political machinations without any proof of effectiveness.

I recall the 70's in which we were "cooling" and science thought air dropping chipped tires on the poles would attract sufficient heat to melt some of it. LOL, and it's only gotten crazier. Leave. The. Poles. Alone.

Freeze or Fry, the problem is always capitalism and the solution is always socialism.

If I add 10 apples to a pile everyday and someone else eats two of them everyday, I'm adding eight apples net and the pile continues to grow. If one day I add, a RECORD LOW of five apples, I've added a net three apples to the pile and the pile continues to grow.

With greenhouse gasses, to see a reduction; a reversal, we'd have to add less CO2 than the Earth can recycle or sequester naturally through forests and oceans. Unfortunately, a 20 year low is still above that number, and with China and India emitting vastly more than they were twenty years ago, a reduction in US emissions is only going to slow temperature growth not halt it.

The second part is the cooling over thousands of years, this is going to be a few degrees in a century; a far faster pace than anything seen short of a meteorite impact.

Um, and, like, species died off before man, but one can say that the passenger pigeon, the sardine fisheries off the Western South American seaboard, the Cypress Trees in Greece, any trees on Easter Island, the farmland of Babalyon, and lions and bears in Europe, man has also changed the dynamic of ecologies world wide. Just because it happened before naturally doesn't make CO2 production now a non driver.

About the only thing I agree with is we have to deal with it, because we are beyond the tipping point.

Freeze or Fry, the problem is always capitalism and the solution is always socialism.

What a ridiculous non sequitur!

I'm at ease writing this as I am neutral about man made global warming (don't know enough about it to have an opinion) and even more neutral on politics (like sports and entertainment, politics have become a star industry devoid of content)

Even if some entities use taxpayers funds and others give their funding to favourite thesis (both exist in ample quantities) whatever that has to do with capitalism and socialism (reasonably well defined concepts) is an amusing mystery to me.

For those that do not believe in science, is there a metric that exists where you would begin to understand what is happening?
Or is that simply not possible, even if all ice on both caps were to melt, or daily temps began to exceed 150 degrees?

" Or is that simply not possible, even if all ice on both caps were to melt, or daily temps began to exceed 150 degrees?"

Is that 150 Fahrenheit , or 150 Celsius?. Well, either way, I would venture that there would be no one to persuade at those temperatures. On the other hand, do you suppose that an Ice Age might, just might, tone down the hysterical behavior of the GW crowd?. Just wondering...
P.S. Science demands that the results must be independently verifiable, and repeatable. So, please, point me in the direction of those verifiable and repeatable results. Not hypothesis, mind you, but, again, verifiable and repeatable results. I am able and willing to read scientific papers of that kind. Anyone who pretends that this issue has been settled, for either side, is full of it. Yes, we are getting warmer, but the rest of it is wishful thinking as far as either denying or grossly exaggerating the effects of said warming. Those who not only believe in science but actually practice it, are far more circumspect about going hysterical than it is commonly claimed by either side of this religious war. Besides, in this life, nobody gets out alive...

Sir, "believe in science" ? You sound like a religious zealot. Science is about a method and process for discovering irrefutable truth, not about a "consensus" nor manipulated data. I 'lost my religion' sometime after East Anglia--I could not "keep the faith" any longer. The only thing 'cooking' is the source data. When it wasn't "lost."

That the earth is warming is not in contention. To be debated is whether it's man-made or not. Enough tree ring/ice core samples have been taken to show a pattern of warming and cooling throughout the last thousands of years. Long before the advent of SUVs.

Pontificating and speaking Ex Cathedra on a mere belief does not follow the scientific method. Sir, follow the money.

It has been both much warmer and much colder in the past - and unfortunately the cycles of warmth on earth have tended to be much shorter than the bitterly cold ice ages. There is little reason to believe that this has changed (all of it has happened frequently long before any humans burned fossil fuels). Warmth means a food surplus, means civilization. It seems totally bizarre to want to fight it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxmo9DskYE

Really, like the 'warmth' occuring in the midwest right now, which might become the norm? Or the 'warmth' that is killing off our forests, the one's not being exterminated by wildfires (the fires are so hot the completely kill tree instead of burning litter and scortching mature trees)?

Our global civilization depends on just a handful of crops that all florish in only a narrow band of temp and moisture. Most of the world's bread baskets are probably going to dry up or move north, maybe into completely different countries.

No science is about taking measurements. It's not about repeating, you can't repeat field studies. April 1972 can't be repeated or replicated. This doesn't mean every field trial in the history of science is therefore null and void.

And we are still in an Ice Age, if we're getting all technical

And yeah it's settled that man made climate change is happening, and yes it is looking bad. That much is settled.

" Global climate is, by definition, independently unrepeatable, since we have only one planet Earth, and climate systems are chaotic."
Precisely my point. It is mostly conjecture. Some are more reasonable than others. Or, conversely, some are more unreasonable than others. But anyone who claims that they have irrefutable scientific evidence, on either side of this religious war, is merely whistling Dixie. Some whistle it louder than others, that's all; but they are still merely whistling Dixie when they claim that their assertions are irrefutable as far as scientific evidence goes - by definition, as you rightly pointed out.

No individual bit of weather is global warming. The whole godda... point is that the average temp of the planet (plus lots of other factors) has a strong effect on the probabilities of what types of weather are distributed where.

Don't confuse the concept of climate change with yearly weather. The two are not the same thng.

All right. I will tighten up my definitions. The theory must be falsifiable; attempts at falsifying the theory have been made; and were unsuccessful. Or, attempts at falsifying were made, and those efforts were successful. The latter would prove the initial theory/proposition false. These attempts at falsification were conducted by independent entities (independent of the proposers of said theories); and their results are verifiable and repeatable by all who perform the same falsification procedures.
Re: Solar eclipses. You have to be very careful when you want use that as an example to bolster the theories of the GW doomsayers. Predicting solar eclipses, very accurately, has been a human activity for millennia. Although the prediction of the end of the world has also been a human activity for many millennia, not one single one of them has been accurate. Of course, the increasing levels of chemicals that trap the solar energy in the atmosphere will increase the temperature of said atmosphere - that is not really questioned by sane people - the effects of the increased temperature and the rate at which those effects manifest themselves are questioned, debated and are only predictions, and not proven theories. There is the rub.

"Chaotic systems behave by rules, and while precise behavior isn't predictable to say that they are completely uncharacterizable is also false. Mathematically."

Try to predict , mathematically, the weather. I invite you to describe , oh, say, pure electron plasma, mathematically. I am not joking.
I am of the opinion that we, humans, will do ourselves in with overpopulation and the concomitant problems, long before the babbling true believers of fatal GW would get a chance to find out whether they were right or not...

"long before the babbling true believers of fatal GW would get a chance to find out whether they were right or not..."

Fatal schmatal, will a major shift in climate, say one that dries up our breadbasket regions be "fatal", no. Will it change our nation? Yes, very probably. Might such things happening world wide lead to dramatic changes much like WWII, perhaps. Like Hanta virus? Or Ebola?

In as much as we have the formula to describe when a plasma obtains, we can predict that it will occur. I have seen an interview of scientist/engineers nearly in tears explaining how they pleaded with the Bush administration to deal with the levee system in New Orleans because a severe hurricane.. oh like Katrina would overwhelm the system. So my argument goes: theory bounds behavior in usefully predictable ways. The way you present your argumentation it is as if you are saying, "well you can't predict weather two days out, ergo weather forecasting is useless and bogus". Tell that to a farmer, or people in Louisiana.

I am pessimist about our ability to alter the course of climate change, and my view is that 'we' are better served at looking at what's happening. What happens if our farming regions look on average like this year's drought? What happens if much of our forest regions die off because of wildfires (a much more man made problem due to fire suppression for so long) or because trees eventually succumb to drought? They shut down respiration and live off their reserves. Eventually they starve and die, because they either dry out or 'hold their breath', unable to produce food for themselves.

Ah, and I missed on salient point, Climate is not weather. Climate effects weather. The two systems are not identical.

Pump a bunch of C02 into a green house and the effect on temp, all things being equal, can probably be calculated (at least the direction it will go in). One still cannot guess how tall each plant within it will grow, even if you have a good idea of what will happen in general to them, if you know the plant species well enough.

I think we are dancing around the same thing. I have equal contempt for both the GW religious fanatics and the extremist deniers. Neither side is rational - their insane (yes, pun intended) attempts at demonstrating their scientific reasonings notwithstanding.
For some thoughts on this subject you might find the link below entertaining/didactic. I surmise you won't regret having read it. The author of the article is a professor of physics at Stanford University and a co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physics.

I work in Alaska and northern Canada during the summers. Global warming has also had an impact on the boreal forest. Melting permafrost and higher occurrences of forest fires have all been attributed to higher global temperatures.

We've learned a ton in the last 100 years. Everything from vaccines, to some cures for cancer. On the pollution front we know that smog is unhealthy and that pouring raw sewage into waterways leads to all kinds of problems not just for the ecosystem but also for human health.

On the climate change front. I'll be frank, it's hard to look at the arctic and antarctic (two of the most unpredictable places on earth) and point with certainty to any one culprit.
I'll be frank, I'm not sold on the whole Ozone thing.

Why is it that I am not sold? Look at most of the modern advances in science and technology. They did not use a UN sponsored organization to peddle stuff at me. If I want to learn about cancer treatments, I don't go to the WHO, I go read the paper of the guy who has invented hte lastest miracle drug. I don't need the WHO to tell me anything. The only thing I need the WHO is to help us disseminate polio vaccine or trypanosomiasis treatments in subsaharan Africa and even here there is a ton of corruption.

The UN is after two things: 1) my money 2) power over me. As such, alarms from them largely go unanswered.

What needs to happen you ask? Convince Lindzen. Convince the other luminaries out there who are skeptics. Convince them and I'll take a more serious tone.

Until then, 40 years of observations on one of the most climatologically unpredictable places on earth doesn't tell me much except to keep watching it.

Now I urge you to think carefully about what you meant by "action" if by action you mean me giving $300billion a year to third world tyrants? Well, I can tell you that I will NEVER be ready for that course of action.

If you meant by "action" that we should develop a full scale replacement for fossil fuels. Well, I'm on board right now. This very instant. The problem is that we don't have viable energy sources that can replace fossil fuels to power all of our modern society.

If you suggest that I undergo heart surgery and remove my heart but that you don't have a suitable replacement for my heart, well - I'll just tell you that I object to your approach. I'll keep my bad fossil fuel ticker until it gives out or until we can find a good replacement.

That's the problem with a lot of people on here. They don't understand that we DO NOT have viable replacements to the monstrous challenges we face. You think we can just wave a wand and that all will be ok. It won't.

This argument is inane. If we don't find suitable replacements for fossil fuels, we're going to run out of them in about a thousand years and then we'll all descend into feudal society and then in a few thousand years after that we'll be extinct and in 500 million years the corals (that we worry so much about today by a bunch of ignorant overeducated activists) will still be around because they were here 500 million years ago and will be around into the far future.

You see, what you don't get is that there is a very high probability we'll be extinct in less than a million years and the world won't care.

Our only hope is that we figure out fusion power, that we get our population under control, that we figure out the cures to the unknown pandemic over the horizon and hopefully that a Zefram Cochrane comes along pronto.

I think very few go to UN publications to learn about Climate Change. Did you ever try reading an IPCC report? There are plenty of papers from the scientists themselves out there for you to read, if you don't trust the UN. Take a look at James Hansens research here for example: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/publications.shtml

So, name calling is part of your educated, intelligent response? The science is understood and supported by well over 99% of climate scientists. The research is available openly for anyone to view. Your argument about convincing Dr Lindzen is interesting, but it negates the other esteemed PhD's in climate science who are convinced. You don't need the IPCC--the individual research is staggering. The IPCC tried to provide an overarching perspective of the current research and it's potential impacts. Some discussions of Lindzen's calculations and conclusions can be found at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/about/

Yes it is Jim and if you can't handle a bit of passionate prose, well you're not a true connoseur. The best food critic is one who can appreciate fine french haute cuisine AND Chilidogs and BBQ spare ribs!

Now, your other "staggering" failure in logic is in thinking that climate science is done by consensus. That guy from Texas A&M is a TOOL, a HUGE TOOL. Lindzen obliterated him in a recent debate with his soft spoken demeanor of a professor that KNOWS and UNDERSTANDS.

See science is not about consensus. It's about being right.

If science were done by consensus, we'd be buying snake oil and the sun would still be revolving around the earth, and plate tectonics would be buried under some arrogant idiot's heel (yeah there's a hard word for ya).

Yes to your population question but the issue with pandemics is that diseases are torments to humanity that substantially increase suffering and detract from quality of life. While the end result to a global pandemic would be 15% to 40% fewer people, the results would be a devastating shock to entire societies, to families, to the economies of entire countries.

Global infrastructures can't deal with half our population dying at once not to mention the emotional distress to the people themselves and the mass distruption of global society. But pandemics do happen and they will likely happen again. Our goal should be to mitigate and stop those though and quickly.

Population control has to be through a choice where generations just replenish less through birth control and a desire to just procreate less. That way, societies stabilize at more reasonable levels. These things though are very tough because people don't like government intruding into personal choices like that. These things hit at the core of individual vs societal rights and what gets the UN into trouble so much. No doubt these are very difficult things that require careful and humane treatment.

The reverse of your scenario is Demographic Dilution or outright fall off. Replacement rates should be in the range of 2.3 children per couple, yes?

Without that cultures disappear and only the breeders succeed the fallen culture. The EU is an excellent example given the broad gap between Muslim and the indigenous reproductive rates. Bye, bye Spain, Germany, France, et al.

How do you know that the poles have "always" been variable if, in the very next sentence, you assert that we've only been able to monitor them in the past few decades. You managed to contradict yourself in the first two sentences. The only thing those statements have in common is that they both affirm your pre-existing beliefs.

If you are afraid of the UN and don't know that consensus is how every field of science works from particle physicals to cell biology, then what hope does anyone have of beating the crazy out of you?

Do you think a scientist just publishes a single paper and then every single opinion just automatically just shifts to agreeing with it? It is just automatic? There are minority opinions in every field. But I forgot it is just about being right. So simple.

Also I thought it was the illuminati who are taking over the world, or the masons, but is it the UN now? I can't keep up with this stuff. Not enough consensus amongst them conspiracy folk, I wish I could just have someone tell me who is right. That would be easier than having to assess evidence.

"See science is not about consensus. It's about being right.”
True. Also, Science is based on working from evidence wherever possible. So, I have a question:

Do you consider Arctic and Antarctic ice core samples to be a valid evidence for estimating past climatic conditions? What about tree rings? Judging from your statement in the base comment "And, we've only had the technology to monitor this for a few decades", you don't accept either as evidence.

Ah JA, so in love with Lindzen. Hundreds of scientists of his calibre, yet you choose to trust the one who happens to say what you want to believe.

If you have a pressing feeling on the chest when you go up the stairs, I suppose you find yourself a physician who tells you it's not your heart?

You say climate scientists have not convinced Lindzen, but some men simply refuse to be won over by any rational argument. Good chance that Lindzen is such a man. Besides, he is a very lonely man among his colleagues by now, as he did not manage to convince any of his peers, either.

But I guess you set all your money on number 36 and will keep saying 36 until the croupier has called 'rien ne va plus'. You must know that your chances of being right are slim, but you cannot afford to admit it. Old men can be so stubborn...

There are viable replacements to fossil fuels - if what we're really trying to replace is energy enough to power the modern world. There is enough solar and wind energy and enough technology to make every building self-sufficient in terms of energy, and it wouldn't cost us in jobs, either - creating and maintaining micro-turbines and batteries would create plenty of jobs to replace those lost in fossil fuels industries. The problem is, the corporate barons, who have actually a stated interest in acquiring your wealth and an implied interest in acquiring your power, will not be as wealthy and powerful if we accept decentralized energy sources over those like oil and coal that are buried deeply enough to require the centralization of resources in order to be usable (thereby justifying an amassment of wealth unprecedented in world history).

The notion that the expression of this imaginary food critic's appreciation of all foods is to pour chili sauce all over their 'haute cuisine' seems as unlikely as the notion that combining what seems like lofty topics, with gutter speech, sloppy argumentation,logical fallacy and personal attacks is an effective means of communication or persuasion.
"Now, your other "staggering" failure in logic is in thinking that climate science is done by consensus"
This is a strawman logical fallacy. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position fails to constitute an attack on the actual position.
Science is about systematic observation, measurement, experimentation, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
One might argue that Jim's weighting of a consensus constitutes a argumentum ad populum fallacy and have been on firmer ground. This of course bears some examination as his post seems to be more about what is likely to be true based on a qualified consensus rather than any declaratory statement that it is actually true because of the consensus.

I take it you hae read Hansen's work and find it being junk? What part of it do you think is unreliable?

For sure, very much research is done to satisfy grant requests or professors, but knowing that is not enough to say that all reasearch is bad. Every paper has to be judge on its own merits. And that is not anything you have to be an expert to do - I strongly believe that the hallmark of good research is not that it is hard to understand, but that it communicates complicated findings in a clear language.

Nige, point me to a single scientist on earth from a reputable institution who thinks that the sun revolves around the earth? A single person.

Now, here I have professor Lindzen, head of atmospheric physics at MIT who is a skeptic.

Do you want to beat the crazy out of him too?

Plain and simple the consensus is irrelevant. The consensus thought the world was flat, that plate tectonics was bogus and that the sun revolved around the earth. The consensus was wrong plain and simple.

I stand wih Lindzen, I ask that you not engage in physical brutality against either of us.

Any consensus that arises from peer review within a commonly held framework of characterizations, hypothesis, predictions and experimentation will tend to be more reliable as a predictor of likely future events than a consensus that relies on argument from authority and argument from tradition. Both are, of course, logical fallacies.

Even given the high cost of (currently non-subsidized) small solar and wind systems, some homes are already energy independent:
(TE isn't allowing me to link to an article, but try looking up energysavers.gov)

If we think outside the box and look around, there is energy everywhere that is wasted everyday. There is already technology that allows us to harness energy from sources rarely even considered because they can't be centralized at the source.

For example, there are several ways to harness body heat from the clothes we wear everyday - your shirt could one day charge your cell phone. A small, one-kilometer stretch of roadway made from pizoeletric material is capable of generating 44 megawatts of electricity per year — enough to power 30,800 homes for a year. Hydropower is readily available in our homes, and one design can generate hydroelectricity every time you turn on the tap. (Again, TE isn't allowing a direct link, but go to stumbleupon waterwheel-generates-hydroelectricity-every-time-you-turn-on-the-tap; the other technologies mentioned above are linked in the same article)

We have the technology. If we could agree to subsidize this technology as we have subsidized fossil fuels for so long, it could be made accessible to all of us.

That's the kind of fanciful thinking that ignores all of the hidden costs and factors hidden in these things.

How hard is it to make these clothes? is such production bad for the environment? etc, etc, etc.

pizoelectric material? where can we get this in commercially viable quantities? what's its longevity under heavy vehicular loads? what about abuse from the weather? sun? etc etc etc

The plain and simple answer is that you are wrong. We don't have the technology. If we did and it were commercially viable, we would've deployed it already. Market economics and forces are very adept at exploiting inefficiencies. We don't have those. Sorry. Everything you say does not bear out.

It is true that he has been politically active, but he was a scientist long before that. And if you consider what conclusions he has reached - that continuing co2emissions will make earth inhabitable, it would be kind of hypocritical to not engage politically to stop that from happening.

That some problems are complex, and require intellectual vigor, rigor, and energy to explore is only a barrier to the intellectually lazy, the undisciplined, and the incurious.
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - John Kennedy's Rice Stadium Moon Speech

Yes and there have been several "scientists" who change their views on these topics and go from one camp to the other....in both directions. This generally results in a "book deal" and some money. It's a convenient little system.

So yes, if you thought the world was about to end, you should stand up.

At the same time, at no point in our geologic history has carbon dioxide been this low in our atmosphere except during the carboniferous period. Look it up! It's a scientific fact. We're severely CO2 depleted.

If a scientist does not change their conclusions based on validated contrary evidence, they are not a scientist. Additionally, a constant reevaluation of predictions of outcomes that seem most likely based on available data is a hallmark of successful critical analysis.

Please cite your source for the correlation of changing views of scientists and book deals.

It is true that the carbon dioxide is exremely low now, in geological terms. But that is also the essence of the problem - this all time low made possible human civilization, but we are now pushing co2 levels up to very dangerous levels.

...which is why I mention subsidies. The technology does exist obviously, there are even pictures of it lol - your concern is that switching large-scale to more earth-friendly technologies is too expensive. Which is a practical argument from an individual perspective. Economically, the playing field can and should be leveled for technologies that rely less on the emission of greenhouse gasses.

You haven't answered my question about whether you recognize tree rings and ice core samples as valid evidence of past climate. Without your answer on that issue, I won't be able to decide on whether to include or exclude them in my argument.
Of course, if this is a result of deliberate evasion, then your silence answers much more than any outright response... :P

It's pretty clear you're a raging "warmer" and you think that I'm a complete "denier" - whatever you think those terms are but you're wrong.

You have to understand that core samples, sedimentary evidence, C14 analysis, tree rings etc are all something that we scientists call "proxies" and from these proxies we create "climate reconstructons" For any one proxy we might have 7 reconstructions and people will argue about the meaning of the proxies (for decades sometimes these arguments rage)...only nowwe have Greenpeace and the UN to AMPLIFY these arguements.....which is NOT helpful.

Here is one very recent proxy study of tree rings that broadly indicates that the world has been cooling for 2,500 years...at least in the northern hemisphere.

Is it a smoking gun that says that AGW is wrong? No! It's ONE climate reconstruction of tree rings. BUT, IT SHOULD NOT BE IGNORED EITHER or callously tossed aside because it doesn't fit with YOUR PET THEORY. It's simply science and it's one more piece to a monumentally complex puzzle.

Most climate reconstructions show that the world is broadly cooling and that we're slipping back into an ice age! That's science. Does this mean we're in imminent danger of going back in 20 years into glacial conditions of 30,000 years ago? NO! or more precisely, we don't know! During the 1900s instrumental measurements showed a very small temperature decrease from the 40s to the 70s and temperature increase from the 70s to the 90s. It appears we might be about to cool again for a few decades but it really has only been a few decades that we've had the capability to look at the entire world's climate. What does it show? Not enough. We don't know if there is cause for alarm. That's plain facts and science.

If you want to go and discount every reconstruction that doesn't support your pet theory, go ahead - it makes you a very poor scientist.

Proxies are wonderful tools and I applaud the extremely hard work of scientists who toil to gather this very valuable information. It sheds light into earth's 4.5 billion year history but we all MUST acknowledge the limitations of proxies...Proxies are akin to peering into a very big house through a very small peephole and trying to see the entire contents of the house.....valuable tools but we should be cautious in taking them as dogma.

There that's what I think of proxies and I'm always excited when a new reconstruction comes out, especially if it deals with the carboniferous or the triassic....when CO2 levels were 6X current industrial levels!!!

In the early carboniferous the global avg temp was 68F along with the higher ppm of CO2. The point isn't that historically there have been periods of higher or lower CO2, its the impact that higher or lower CO2 concentrations have on the climate.

I happen to think that Professor Hansen is a firm proponent of nuclear power vs coal power. I could be wrong but that's what I think at the moment.

I happen to think that Professor Hansen currently only looks for things that support his particular theory - it's all he really publishes. I do not know nor do I have proof that he discards contradictory information to his theories.

However, there is plenty of science out there that at least partially falsifies AGW theory. I frankly don't understand the alarm. I don't understand how the thinking of luminaries like Lindzen is simply dismissed. This is not a popularity contest. It's about who will be proven to be right. Are humans capable of impacting our climate in the short term to the degree of sudden supervolcanism or giant meteor strike? I tend to doubt it given my knowledge of past CO2 levels and past mass extinctions.

I happen to think that the atmosphere is strongly negatively feedbacked (something that AGW theorists disagree with). Does that mean that we won't have sudden weather or climate shifts no? Look at the neolithic subpluvial. I'd be very interested if serious scientists were to try to figure out sudden shifts in climate in the future. However, we can't and shouldn't arbitrarily assign human CO2 emissions as the automatic villain. It's disingenous, politically charged, and in some cases can be criminal.

I wish Professor Hansen well. I just don't see him as a scientist conducting unbiased research just like I don't see Professor Gleick as an unbiased researher who would publish their findings irrespective of whether those supported their thesis or not. Therefore, to me, they are activists that I don't trust. Is that bad? Not really.

History has a funny way of clearing all of this up. We'll know more in a thousand years if we still have an advanced society in that far future.

justanonymous
Thank you for your frank admission of inherent bias. You have also several times used the phrase "we scientists", from which I infer that you are in the academia.
Despite claims to the contrary, scientists are human, so our expectations out of them must remain firmly within human limitations. As such, I expect scientists not to falsify data, but I don't expect them not to withold information that are disadvantageous to their argument. To expect that out of anyone less than a Saint is unrealistic. That is probably engineer in me talking, but as such I will not discount ANY information from anyone who has no records of outright falsification and/or idiocy.
Regarding proxies, I have an interesting anecdotal evidence of how change in circumstances led to complete re-evaluation of already known proxies. After the March 11th East Japan Earthquake last year that demonstrated M9.0+ seismic activity near Japan is possible, previously little regarded research on coastal area sediments that implied the existence of past mega-tsunamis have been revisited, with experts in the field given much greater funding with an objective to re-evaluate their past work using latest available technology.
This has resulted in drastic revision of Tsunami risk in the Southern coast of Japan (facing the Phillipines Plate) that was published last week.
So, the proxies and their interpretations were there before 3/11, but were considered too outlandish by mainstream academia. 3/11 forced the mainstream to admit that they were the ones in the cloud-cuckooland, and the 'outlandish' has become the new norm.

I think you and I differ on the expectations of a "scientist." A true scientist is after the expansion of knowledge not the advancement of their particular pet theory. Theories come and go and scientists might have to change their views.

You're ok with, "I don't expect them not to withold information that are disadvantageous to their argument." That is not science, that's something else.

Here is an outlandish example. Most scientists at JPL do not believe that there was ever intelligent life on Mars. If the Mars Rover were to take crisp pictures of Pyramids of Giza like structures and calcified bones of martians, we should not expect them to publish that information because it would falsify their thesis? Mind you, the grants and funding for the rovers came from the pocketbooks of taxpayers! My expectation and the expectation of every taxpayer is that the findings are published in their entirety regardless of whether they support the scientist who is doing the work or not. After all, it's very inefficient for us taxpayers to go fund a pro-alien civilization seeking curiosity rover at a cost of 2billion dollars to also go to Mars that will in turn see an alien head in every single rock up there.

Your thesis is very flawed my friend.

I expect scientists to publish their findings regardless of whether it falsifies their current theory or not. Only this way can we move forward to gaining true knowledge.

Where would the standard model be if researchers witheld data from the Large Hadron collidor simply because it didn't line up with their current and incomplete pet theory thinking!!!

"You're ok with, "I don't expect them not to withold information that are disadvantageous to their argument." That is not science, that's something else."
OK, I should have been more specific: "I don't expect scientists to risk their funding or employment by producing information that are disadvantageous to the argument they are paid to support."
There are many (probably TOO many) scientists these days whose continued research depends on funding with strings attached. In this climate (no pun intended), I am less inclined to be sanctimonious about those takers of 30 pieces of silver since there, but for the grace of god, goes I.

You are saying that Professor Mueller of UC Berkley shouldn't have published that the science showed that world was warming in his BEST study simply because it would've gone against his big industry grant donors and put his funding at risk!

That's INSANE!!

Professor Mueller showed integrity as a scientist by publishing what his data showed. I trust that guy to at least give it to me straight.

If there are scientists out there that are witholding data because it might threaten their current funding, then those "guys" are not scientists!! AND they should NEVER get funding again of any type!

you have it very wrong my friend. Scientists need to have the integrity to publish their findings no matter what the findings might be.

I am thankful Mueller published what he did. It's another piece of this monumentally complex puzzle.

I hope that true "scientists" out their continue their work answering the fundamental questions out there and that our body of knowledge.

science should not be 100% beholden to money. It might seek to answer a question that has economic components like "what is the energy density of natural gas vs tar sand?" That's a fair question, with a finite scientific unambiguous answer.

If scientists should just be defferential to the 30 pieces of silver, scientists would've already proven the istence of GOD under funding from the Vatican simply because there are strings attached to those 30 pieces of silver and they are beholden to that silver. BALONEY!

I believe there is for his original midget followers. Top Ramen was simply too 'high' shelf for his initial disciples to reach(or eat, for that matter). In a day he created Bottom Ramen, then hit the volcano for the longest binge to date - this binge period is what we now call the Ice Ages of 10,000 years ago.
While this is not stated in any of our scriptures, until someone can prove us wrong with physical evidence it stands as irrefutable fact and should be taught in schools. After all: 'the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.'

"global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s."

There may be more to this theory than it appears at first glance: Periods of relative coolness between 2008-2011 coincides with the rise in piracy both off the shores of Somalia by its lawless inhabitants, and in the Antarctic seas by the Pirate organization Sea Shepherd. Both have declined this year, and now we see record warming again... :P

On a side note, the continued existence of the Top R'amen is directly threatened by climate change, since most Top Ramen are made from flour of Australian "Prime Hard" wheat, whose continued production is threatened by falling water table and diminishing farming water supply in Australia. Same applies to Australian Wine.

According to Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative, to meet global energy demands and at the same time reduce carbon emissions, the world must transition to energy technologies that produce little to no carbon dioxide (CO2).

CMI's Low-Carbon Energy Group is seeking ways to speed that change by making low-carbon energy technologies more cost-effective.

Working with partners in China and Italy, the group studies technologies for capturing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels used in electricity, hydrogen, and synfuels production.

Rational people do. The problem is that the general audience of both sides of this religious war is utterly science deficient. They see only what they want to see. One side uses bogus science to present its predictions; while the other simply ignores hard, demonstrable, facts. The very suggestion that the scientist of both sides are not tendentious is silly beyond description. Unless a scientist is financially independent, (s)he will remain very conscious of where his/her funding come from. Oh, yes, let's hear it for those martyrs for humanity's welfare. Go ahead, stand up for principle at your workplace and see what happens...